The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-02-06
Urgent Need of an Assuring Voice That Can Be
Heard Above the Din Of Preparation and
Across the Present Sea of Uncertainty.
Arrangements for Carrying the Irish
Coercion Bill When the Time Comes.
And Even Then an Effort Will Be Made to Tenn
per Law with Mercy-No Military Inter-
vention by England on the Continent.
ON WHAT A SLENDER THREAD,


Inc Financial World Repeatedly Shaken by
News of Enthusiastically Character.
Special to the Indianapolis Journal.
LONDON, Feb. Sit is curious fact that the
whole financial world has been repeatedly
shaken, during the past week, on simple and
hypothetical pieces of intelligence, which, each
occasion. caused a rapid fall in the prices of
stocks. not only on the London Exchange, but
upon all the continental bourses These finan-
cial pancs fair indication of the uncertain
ty and alarm with which the foreign politics of
the day are regarded in all the capitals of Eu-
rope. The most trivial incident as in
terpreted in an anonymous sense, the myster-
les OF diplomatists and the underground
maneuvers of foreign secretaries are highly
favorable to groundless alarm. Unless there is
some steadying voice across this .umult of I'M
certainty. nations may be pushed into war out
of sheer panic One remarkable feature about
the prevailing alarms is that their centre shifts
every day. In the last few days the eastern
horizon has been frightened, while the western
is overcast It was impossible to keep the two
sensations running concurrently for any time,
and already the Franco-German scare
has scotched the Bulgarian. The facts
OF course. are capable of q more grave construc-
ton. II may be that Europe is so convinced of
the reality of the Franco-German danger that,
in order to prepare for that contingency, the
powers are willing to compromise the Bulgarian
difficulty at any cost The German elections
will be watched in Europe with great anxiety.
The mandate OF the people matters little to the
German Chancellor, but it matters a good deal
to Europe. Prince Bismarck is not say his friends
to be thwarted by any such trif1e as the refusal
of the popular consent, but in the interest
of European peace it would be by nc means I'M
desirable that the German people should register
even fruitless protest against war expenditure.
1t would be practical proof that whatever the
government may think. the German democracy,
at all events, are bent upon peace. Moreover,
| Europe stands much in need of some sort of
protest against the extravagant lengths to which
the doctrine that preparation for war is the best
| guarantee for peace has now been pushed. Ger
many and France are rendering one anothers
| lives intolerable An increase of military ex-
| penditure at the present moment means war.
| and not peace. The burdens on each
people are already unbearable; q lit
tie more and conflict must
be forced to the end that one may parish and
leave the other to exist in peace That is the
meaning of Prince Bismarck's '.Saigner blanc -
I If the present intolerabe state of things contn-
ues. one Nation must bleed the other to death.
or both must live perpetuallv under arms,
drained by enormous war budgets and unable to
| pursue in security the ordinary life of peaceful
citizens An immediate war is hardly proba-
BILE: the end is not yet but the end, when it
comes. will be disastrous, unless mean while
the democracies of both countries take the ques-
| ton into their own hands. Until they do so.
| the financial world will be the victim of perpet-
ual panics.